BizSugar.com › Online Marketing › Is Bidding on Trademarked Brands a Viable SEM Tactic?

The rationale behind bidding on trademarked brands is something like this: if I bid on my competitor’s name than my company’s PPC ad will show up in any branded searches for my competitor. Since my competitor and I are going after the same target audience, this is good way to piggyback on the brand value of my competition and drive targeted leads to my own site. Full disclosure, bidding on a competitor’s brand for my own PPC campaign is an SEM tactic that I once tested. I tried it out for a month or two, but I quickly realized a few very important things. First, when someone is searching directly for a brand they are just about ready to pull the trigger and convert. My lowly PPC is probably not going to be enough of a deterrent to tear them away from that other company, so it’s really not a cost effective way to use my PPC budget.